Fiction across borders
Subtitle: imagining the lives of others in late-twentieth-century novels
By: Shameem Black.
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 333
ISBN-13: 9780231149785; 9780231149792; 9780231520614
Subjects: American fiction -- Minority authors -- History and criticism; American fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Commonwealth fiction (English) -- History and criticism; Other (Philosophy) in literature; Difference (Philosophy) in literature; Ethics in literature
Description: Theorists of Orientalism and postcolonialism argue that novelists betray political and cultural anxieties when characterizing "the Other." Shameem Black takes a different stance. Turning a fresh eye toward several key contemporary novelists, she reveals how "border-crossing" fiction represents socially diverse groups without resorting to stereotype, idealization, or other forms of imaginative constraint. Focusing on the work of J.M. Coetzee, Amitav Ghosh, Jeffrey Eugenides, Ruth Ozeki, Charles Johnson, Gish Jen, and Rupa Bajwa, Black introduces an interpretative lens that captures the ways in which these authors envision an ethics of representing social difference. They not only offer sympathetic portrayals of the lives of others but also detail the processes of imagining social difference. Whether depicting the multilingual worlds of South and Southeast Asia, the exportation of American culture abroad, or the racial tension of postapartheid South Africa, these transcultural representations explore social and political hierarchies in constructive ways. Boldly confronting the orthodoxies of recent literary criticism, Fiction Across Borders builds upon such seminal works as Edward Said's Orientalism and offers a provocative new study of the late twentieth-century novel.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.